Contents

Initial
reaction

Contrary to the interpretations of the US intelligence, no
preparations were underway for even a minimal Soviet support force
at the time martial law was imposed according to the declassified
Soviet archives.[1] On
August 25 a special commission was created in Moscow to formulate policy towards the latest
developments in Poland. It was headed by senior Communist Party
ideologist Mikhail
Suslov and included: KGB
chairman Yury Andropov, foreign minister Andrei Gromyko
and defense minister Dmitry Ustinov. They
were somewhat reluctant to resort to military countermeasures in
Poland, and wary of the danger of repetition of the Polish
1970 protests and of the troubles with the ongoing Soviet war in Afghanistan.
However, the East
German and Czechoslovak communist leaders, Erich Honecker
and Gustáv
Husák, were enthusiastic about forced suppression of Solidarity
along the lines of the previous crackdowns. The aging Soviet leader
Leonid
Brezhnev agreed with Honecker and Husák, leaning towards
intervention. The planned joint Soviet, East German and
Czechoslovak attack under the pretext of the Warsaw Pact military exercise 'Soyuz-80'
was set to start on December 8, 1980.[2]

Deeply concerned Polish communist leaders, who initially
demonstrated leniency, slowly began to consider forced suppression
of the popular movement on their own as a probable option. On
October 22 Polish defense minister Jaruzelski launched secret
planning for the imposition of martial law.[2]

The United States intelligence was well aware of the Warsaw Pact
plans. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski compelled
President Jimmy
Carter to disclose the Warsaw Pact military build-up publicly
and repeatedly warn the Soviet Union of the gravest consequences of
its actions.[2][3]

On December 5 at the insistence of Honecker, the leaders of the
Warsaw Pact countries held a summit in Moscow. The Polish leader,
first secretary of the Polish United Workers'
PartyStanisław Kania, promised to do his
best to uproot the opposition by domestic means. Brezhnev didn't
insist on armed intervention, and during subsequent talks Kania
managed to persuade him that a foreign intervention would
inevitably lead to a full-scale national uprising. The invasion was
thus postponed indefinitely to allow the Polish leadership to
suppress the opposition on their own.[2]

Final
decision

However, the Kremlin was discontent with how leniently this
suppression proceeded, and on October 18, 1981, forced the Polish
United Workers' Party to replace Kania with Jaruzelski. The latter
promised to impose martial law, but demanded backing his action by
a promise of Warsaw Pact military intervention if he failed to
control the situation. On October 29, Jaruzelski's demands were
discussed at a session of the Soviet Politburo,
where Andopov confirmed the consensus that no Soviet troops would
be sent to Poland.[2][4]

At the 14th annual meeting of the Committee of Ministers of
Defense of the Warsaw Pact, which took place in Moscow on December
1-4, Jaruzelski's deputy Florian Siwicki on behalf of the former
proposed to issue a bluffing strong statement pledging support of
the Warsaw Pact armed forces to the Polish authorities in order to
give a "cold shower for the counterrevolution" and to deny western
claims that Jaruzelski didn't have backing of his allies. The
Soviet, East German, Czechoslovak and Bulgarian ministers, Dmitry Ustinov, Heinz Hoffmann,
Martin Dzúr and Dobri Dzhurov, supported the proposal. However, it
failed to pass because Romanian minister Constantin Olteanu, who
was not aware that the plans for invasion had already been
discarded and took the threat for real, vetoed the draft after
consultations with Ceauşescu, and his Hungarian counterpart Lajos Czinege was
not ready to agree unless everyone else did.[2][5][6]

At the Politburo meeting of December 10, 1981, the Soviet
leadership was outraged to learn that Jaruzelski was still making
his crackdown on Solidarity conditional on a promise of a Soviet
military intervention if anything went wrong. The Politburo firmly
and unanimously rejected the demand for military backing. Andropov,
one of the most influential figures in the Politburo, who would
become the Soviet leader in less than a year, wary of the threat of
Western political and economic sanctions, made it clear to his
fellow Politburo members that he was ready to reconcile himself to
the possible loss of the Soviet control over Poland to Solidarity,
however unpleasant it might be, if the Soviet communications with
East Germany via Poland continued uninterrupted:

“

We can't risk such a
step. We do not intend to introduce troops into Poland. That is the
proper position, and we must adhere to it until the end. I don't
know how things will turn out in Poland, but even if Poland falls
under the control of Solidarity, that's the way it will be. And if
the capitalist countries pounce on the Soviet Union, and you know
they have already reached agreement on a variety of economic and
political sanctions, that will be very burdensome for us. We must
be concerned above all with our own country and about the
strengthening of the Soviet Union. That is our main line.
<...> As concerns the lines of communication between the
Soviet Union and the GDR that run through Poland, we of course must
do something to ensure that they are safeguarded.[4][7]

”

Chief ideologist Suslov supported him, considering the
possibility of invasion after the Soviet support of détente in the 1970s as a
severe blow to the Soviet international standing.[2][4][7]
The Brezhnev
Doctrine was effectively dead.[8]

Andropov and Jaruzelski

Martial
law

After unsuccessfully begging Warsaw Pact commander-in-chief Viktor Kulikov
and Soviet ambassador Boris Aristov for military assistance once
again, on December 13, 1981, Jaruzelski finally proclaimed martial
law. To justify the emergency measures, Jaruzelski was still
playing on the public fear of Soviet invasion. However, there was
no significant resistance to the martial law and any foreign
military backing proved unnecessary. Ever since Jaruzelski himself
has denied that he invited Soviet troops, insisting that, on the
contrary, the martial law was aimed at prevention of a Soviet
military intervention.[2]

1997
Jachranka conference

In November 1997 a conference was held in Jachranka on the Soviet role in the Polish
crisis of 1980-1981, where Solidarity, Polish communist, Soviet and
American participants of the events, including Jaruzelski, Kania,
Siwicki, Kulikov and Brzezinski, took part. Jaruzelski and Siwicki
maintained that the Soviets had been preparing for invasion all the
time, Kania and Brzezinski opined that the plans for invasion had
been discarded by the second half of 1981 and Kulikov denied the
existence of any plans to intervene even in 1980.[9][3]